The WSM are shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the death of Alan MacSimóin, one of our founder members, a friend, and a key central figure in building the anarchist movement in Ireland for over four decades. Alan had not been a member of WSM for some years but remained politically active right to the end. His last Facebook post on November 29th was supporting the locked out bricklayers at Mary’s Mansions. Alan will be sorely missed by all in the WSM and we offer our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.

Tuesday, June 12 (Russia Day) We are asking for a day of action to highlight the torture and detention of Russian Antifascist Anarchists who are being detained with forced confessions for charges of terrorism.

The Actions: Please take photos of yourselves with messages of support and solidarity for the Anarchist prisoners. You can include signs with the names of those detained and tortured (names are below).

Workers Solidarity Movement Ireland will be holding a demo outside the Russian embassy on the 20th of June at 7pm with such posters and signs.

On May 25th we in Ireland finally get to vote to Repeal the hated 8th amendment. Here we present the 8 reasons WSM members are voting Yes to Repeal along with many of the articles we have published on the issue in recent months.

Aodhan Ó Ríordáin jets off to the States this week to try and crack America with his unique brand of hypocritical liberalism, trumpeting himself as an anti-racist icon in contrast to Trump’s policies of detention and deportation of undocumented migrants. Tómas Lynch takes a look at his record on the homefront.

Nigel Farage in front of a Leave posterwhich many pointed out was very similar to a Nazi propaganda film.

The Leave / Brexit vote in the referendum came in the end as a surprise, a narrow win for Remain was expected. This may be because the core Leave vote was in the run-down white working class communities of the now desolate English and Welsh industrial zones. A population trapped in conditions of long-term unemployment and poverty who no one really pays much attention to anymore.

Some on the left have seized on the makeup of this core vote to suggest that there was some progressive element to the Brexit vote despite the campaign being led by racist hatemongers and wealthy US-oriented neoliberals. Mostly that's a mixture of wishful thinking and post hoc justification for having called for a Leave vote in the first place, but it is true that a section of the working class, C2DEs in marketing speak, voted to Leave in close to a 2:1 ratio. Is the class composition of that vote enough to automatically make it progressive regardless of content? And what does it tell us that a section of the radical left seems to think the answer to that question is yes, that it is enough to be anti-establishment?
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The MACG thus defends Julian Assange, not because of his politics, which have curdled and are now quite suspect, nor because we consider him innocent of the Swedish accusations. The US ruling class has no objection to his politics, because they are riddled with the sort of people with whom he has been collaborating. And neither do they have any objection to sexual assault – if they did, Donald Trump would not be President. The United States wants to punish him, not for any crimes he might have committed, but for his good deeds. The MACG defend Assange for those same good deeds.

Rob Ray’s book begins with the disarming confession that he imagined writing a ‘relatively short pamphlet’ (p3). 300 pages later you’ve been given a whistle-stop tour of Freedom’s history (both newspaper and publishing house). Thankfully, while he draws on previous histories, he includes some new accounts and comments from other people connected with Freedom Press.

Anarchism in the UK is a joke. Once symbolising hard-fought struggles for freedom, the word has been stripped bare to make way for narrow-minded, separatist and hateful identity politics by middle class activists keen to protect their own privileges. We write this leaflet to reclaim anarchism from these identity politicians.

On December 5th we were pained to hear about the untimely death of Alan MacSimóin, veteran anarchist, trade unionist and tireless organiser in Ireland. Today we said farewell to him at Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin, where many other revolutionaries before him have been put to rest. Many friends and comrades from all parties and movements of the left joined his family to bid farewell to this exceptional man. SIPTU, his trade union, had arranged a guard of honour for him. The previous night, the wake at the Teachers’ Club was equally well attended by comrades of all persuasions: from the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, Sinn Féin, Workers Solidarity Movement, Workers’ Party, even Labour. He, as a true non-sectarian, had friends in every single left-wing party, a friendship nurtured in decades of activism.

We learned at lunchtime today of the tragic news that Alan MacSimóin has died. It was sudden and hit us hard. Alan was a social historian, political activist, trade unionist and great supporter of the Come Here To Me! project from day one.

The WSM are shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the death of Alan MacSimóin, one of our founder members, a friend, and a key central figure in building the anarchist movement in Ireland for over four decades. Alan had not been a member of WSM for some years but remained politically active right to the end. His last Facebook post on November 29th was supporting the locked out bricklayers at Mary’s Mansions. Alan will be sorely missed by all in the WSM and we offer our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.

NOT content with calling Jeremy Corbyn a “fucking anti-semite and racist,” and treating herself as the victim when the Labour Party threatened to act on a third party complaint about her use of outrageous and abusive language against a fellow Labour MP whom she has known for several decades, and is the leader of the Labour Party, Margaret Hodge has had the chutzpah to compare her fight against Corbyn’s alleged anti-semitism with her fight in her Barking constituency against the British National Party (BNP).

Tuesday, June 12 (Russia Day) We are asking for a day of action to highlight the torture and detention of Russian Antifascist Anarchists who are being detained with forced confessions for charges of terrorism.

The Actions: Please take photos of yourselves with messages of support and solidarity for the Anarchist prisoners. You can include signs with the names of those detained and tortured (names are below).

Workers Solidarity Movement Ireland will be holding a demo outside the Russian embassy on the 20th of June at 7pm with such posters and signs.

Today May 25th we in Ireland finally get to vote to Repeal the hated 8th amendment. Here we present the 8 reasons WSM members are voting Yes to Repeal along with many of the articles we have published on the issue in recent months.

International Working Women’s Day is steeped in the radical history of women demanding improvement in our daily lives and in our working conditions. IWWD dates back to 1857 in New York City. Women garment workers went on strike to demand a 10-hour working day, better working conditions and equal rights. In honour of this strike, another was held in 1908 by women needle trade workers. They demanded voting rights and, an end to sweatshops and child labour. Two years later, the socialist, Clara Zetkin, proposed that the 8th of March be commemorated as International Working Women’s Day. It was first celebrated nationally in the Soviet Union after the https://www.wsm.ie/russian-revolution, a revolution which began with a strike of women textile workers.
On https://www.wsm.ie/iwd, women stand in solidarity with each other against oppression. We demand control over our lives. We demand https://www.wsm.ie/c/anarchism-oppression-exploitation-policy. We demand freedom.

The announcement that there will be a referendum to decriminalise abortion in Ireland is the product of decades of active campaigning. Pro-choice campaigners built for repeal ever since the hated 8th amendment was entered into the Constitution in 1983, putting a ban on abortion, which was already illegal in the country, into the constitution. If at first this seemed like a distant demand now repeal looks by far the most likely outcome in May. The story of how this happened illustrates how change comes in general. That is not through elections but through people getting organised to demand that change, regardless of which politicians happen to be running the show in any particular year.

On 14th October 2017, Rally for Choice will march through the streets of Belfast. - Last year saw us counter protest the Rally for Life in the North of Ireland, for the first time we marched against their lies instead of our usual static demo. Our counter protest was a huge success, despite being organised at short notice and with only a handful of activists. The protest burst across our streets and convened at Buoy Park afterwards for speakers. We outnumbered the Rally for Life 2016 significantly.

This is the Workers Solidarity Movement position paper on Abortion Rights as collectively agreed at July 2017 WSM National Conference. This position paper sits under the Patriarchy paper which in turn is under the Anarchism, Oppression & Exploitation paper, and hence does not repeat any of that material in these.

Saturday the 30th of September 2017 will go down as a high point in the fight for abortion rights in the Republic of Ireland, and that is a struggle that stretches back decades. Years of campaigning and maintaining a focus on the issue, saw a massive crowd of nearly 30,000 people take to the streets for the annual March for Choice as organised by the Abortion Rights Campaign [ARC]. The calls are for action, and the need for Repeal of the 8th Amendment which bans abortion in almost all circumstances.

The Workers Solidarity Movement in Ireland is in full support of the protests in Brussels on the 28th September demanding a guaranteed, free, and accessible access to abortion across Europe. The EU has stood by idly while the bodily autonomy of pregnant people continues to be violated by some member states including Ireland and Malta. It has similarly done nothing while other member states progressively attack reproductive rights based on the political whimsy of the controlling parties of ever-increasing conservative governments. We hope the this mobilisation will demonstrate the united commitment to reproductive freedom for all.

We stand with you in spirit as we prepare for our own mobilisation on the 30th of September for the Dublin March for Choice and it appears almost certain a constitutional referendum to remove the ban on abortion next summer. The text that follows is our position paper on abortion rights agreed by WSM national conference this summer.

The outraged media reaction to a jury doing its job and finding the Jobstown defendants not guilty is quite extraordinary. Rather than do the right thing and launch an investigation as to how 180 cops could produce evidence that was directly contradicted by video evidence, the media have gone on a rant against Twitter! Rather than finding it suspicious that nearly 3 million in public funds was spent by the DPP on a case that any proper check of available evidence should have indicated was never likely to convince a jury, the media suggest instead that the problem lay in the exact charges brought. The trial was part of a large scale state operation to suppress a mass anti-austerity community campaign.

Every year in either Dublin or Belfast the pro and anti choice movements come head to head around the so called ‘Rally for Life’. This year it was Dublin’s unwilling role to play host to the bigot parade. It mattered more years than many as a referendum on the hated 8th Amendment that bans abortion is promised for next year. It could be that the next Dublin bigot parade scheduled for 2019 will come after they have suffered a major defeat.

Six men were on trial accused of falsely imprisoning the then Tanáiste (deputy Prime Minister) and Labour Party TD, Joan Burton, and her colleague in Jobstown, a working class suburb of Dublin, on 15 November 2014. The charge of false imprisonment carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. All six men claimed that they were exercising their right to protest, and that the protest was peaceful. This was part of a mass campaign that successfully defeated the attempt to introduce water charges. Following a nine week trial, the six have been found not guilty.

Corbyn’s strong showing in the June 2017 UK elections has given a big morale boost to the left. A considerable youth vote, self-mobilising in larger part as a reaction to the ‘me and mine’ selfish society revealed by the Brexit vote seriously set back Tory plans for a fresh wave of Brexit required austerity. Activists used social networking to overcome what had previously been seen as an all powerful smear machine of the billionaire print press. Very few outside the radical left expected this outcome, what drove it and more importantly where can it lead?
[ This is a long read so you can also listen to an audio of the text ]
This piece is not going to answer that in terms of assumptions and assertions but as far as possible through hard numbers. 66% of 18-24 year old’s voted Labour, only a quarter of that, 18% voted Tory [p4]. 27% of those 18-24 year olds said the NHS was the most important issue for them, even though they are least likely to need it [p40]. For the over 65 age group this was flipped, only 23% voted Labour and over twice as many (58%) voted Tory [p4]. In fact, given the way the UK election system works, if only 18-24 year olds had voted, Labour would have been heading for 500 seats. If it had only been those over 65 voting the Tories would have had over 400 seats.

Inter city bus workers in Ireland launched widespread secondary pickets at 4am this morning. Solidarity from transport workers at the other services picketed meant that most of the country ground to a halt as morning rush hour approached, almost all trains, Dublin bus and light rail services did not operate. The action is a clear demonstration of the power transport workers hold because of their position in economies.

International Womens Day in Ireland saw thousands take to the streets in a sequence of 'in work time' protests under the heading 'Strike4Repeal'. Abortion is illegal in almost all circumstances and the protests were an attempt by pro-choice activists to forced the government to stop delaying a referendum to repeal the anti-choice 8th Amendment placed in the Irish constitution in 1983. Workers Solidarity Movement members took part in organising the day and in the aftermath produced a number of articles and videos detailing what happened.